I spent about 5 minutes futzing around in my emulator controller settings because I couldn’t get the spin dash to work and couldn’t remember that sonic 1 doesn’t have it. It feels so weird to play a sonic game without it but after spending 2 hours with the game yesterday I kind of love it.
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has anyone played the sonic 1 prototype? it’s like a legitimate hard mode for a game i know so well, i love it.
(by legitimate i mean it’s harder though having slightly harder stages designs, not by boring stat tweaks, and harder by a normal amount rather than some ludicrous masocore romhack)
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I wouldn’t have minded if they took it away from you for one or two zones of mania just to prove they could still design that way but I think it’s just too anachronistic
I like Sonic 1 but I am never, ever excited to play Marble Garden or Labyrinth, and Scrap Brain is really anticlimactic, because, well… all of the megadrive games are super uneven
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maybe they could have made mighty’s thing that he played like sonic 1 sonic? (what is mighty’s thing anyway? i still don’t have the mania expansion)
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I was surprised by how good sonic 1 green hill felt, It feels fully formed right out of the gate. Surprising then than Marble felt so shitty and seems like a bit of a dead end, design wise (iirc, I’m no expert, but I don’t remember any iterations on Marble from 2 or 3 which good riddance)
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sonic 1 special stage is the best music in any sonic game and that’s why it’s the best special stage
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Yeah Sonic 1 is the only one I really like to play.
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Sonic 1 straddles the 8-bit and 16-bit eras in a really interesting way and I find its flaws more fulfilling than the later games’ flaws.
I have to admit the majority of my Sonic 1 playthroughs ended with me quietly switching to another game in Marble Hill Zone. But after I approached the game with a more persistent mindset, zones like felt rather like a necessary negative space for the high-speed zones to “pop”. There’s such a strong feeling of relief when you make it past Labyrinth Zone and are rewarded with Star Light Zone
What I’m getting at is it’s like Demon’s Souls 5-2 swamp
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labyrinth zone is my favorite zone in sonic 1 and it’s also the most fair, star light zone is full of those obnoxious unkillable bombs and the fans that push you back. I feel like spring yard zone is the “negative space” level because it’s the one with the most whimsical movement with few hazards, but this makes it feel more directionless and purposeless for me
sonic’s best design is when it’s a slow and methodical platformer requiring you to use momentum to make precise jumps. going fast in that game just gives me anxiety because an open stretch of road just feels like one of robotniks tricks. like “oh there’s gonna be a spring or a spike trap at the end of this” and i’m right, there usually is.
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Like, I guess the reason I like sonic 1 is because it feels like a slow game with unlocked movement speed, and maximizing my acceleration in the slow zones is what I find fun and challenging. when the game actually encourages me to go fast it’s like taking that away from me
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Right! My last replay was a decade ago so I’m having to reconstruct my memories of it piecemeal as we’re talking
The real reason Marble Hill Zone sucks is that there’s not much of that core momentum game in it. You’re just waiting a lot for platforms that move at a glacial pace. Labyrinth Zone is a totally different kind of slowness: the biggest stress test of Sonic 1 skills (which is why Scrap Brain turns back into it in Act 3)
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One thing I like about sonic 1 is the soundtrack is mostly just a bunch of songs. In 2 he tries a little more to write music that goes with the theme of the level. But I prefer the former. Ie spring yard vs casino night or labyrinth vs mystic ruins.
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This is a great way to put it, and it’s why I’m not such a fan of Sonic 1. It feels like a new movement system added after all the levels were built; like somebody got in there with a Game Genie right before the Sega logo appears and now you’re playing the pirate version of the game. It’s so strange in the hand but so undeniably Sega.
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As a little kid down the street said about it when I was seven “it sounds like sex”
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Indeed a few years later they did literally that
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I think he does a sort of ground pound, but it’s been a while so I’m not completely sure.
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If anyone is interested those mobile remakes of Sonic 1 and 2 with widescreen and stuff by the Sonic Mania devs have been decompiled and fan ported to PC now. There’s even an improved PC version of Sonic CD and a completely new fan remake of Sonic 3 in a similar style.
I expect there might be even more development to these since this graphic but might be a good start.
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these ports (and the cd port) are also on 3ds and ps vita. widescreen sonic looks incredible on the vita’s screen
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Does anyone else dislike Fez?
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I liked Fez but I like puzzling stuff out, its platformer half was a good bit undercooked.
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